Comments by "TheEvertw" (@TheEvertw) on "FRONTLINE PBS | Official" channel.

Actually, I think this documentary tries to pin the blame on a few individuals, and is designed to generate a lot of hate against them. Investigation-wise, most of this information is widely available. So, no, not a very good one.
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22:40 Mr. Huerta is full of sh*t. It may initially not have been letting the fox guard the hen house but a proper guard dog, but "delegation" created a structure where there are incentives for the guard dog to become a fox. There is a reason why the FAA is a government organisation, tasked by We The People with guarding their safety. Delegation is the worst idea I have ever heard of. It could only have happened in a country that is corrupt through and through. The shameful thing is that it were not Americans who payed the ultimate price for US corruption. This madness & corruption has greatly diminished the standing of the FAA in the world, and of the USA in general.
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@tonywilson4713 Re the FMEA: the problem in this case is that a proper FMEA was done on the MCAS system, and it was considered safe at the time, because its authority was limited and the pilot had the ability to override it. Afterwards, the MCAS system was given more authority to operate, which felt to the engineers involved like a minor change that did not invalidate the previous FMEA. No-one realised that the MCAS system had become too strong for the pilot to override. So, if anything, this case shows the limitations of the FMEA. It helps in performing a structured, exhaustive analysis, but is limited by the assumptions held by the engineers involved.
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Who else is not convinced Boeing learned its lessons? It was unfair to lay the blame solely at Muilenburg: the culture that allowed this disaster had been nurtured by James McNerney.
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You think that will make planes safer? Well, that was a rhetorical question. The answer: harsh punishments will NOT make airplanes safer. These problems are never caused by a single individual, but by a culture that was allowed to develop in a company. Punishing a single scapegoat thus never improves matters. Instead, it encourages a culture where people try to blame other people, instead of solving the real problems.
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@herbertlewis8442 You obviously did not understand my comment, and obviously you have no experience with engineering. If you think punishment can make complex systems safer, PLEASE stay out of management, engineering, health care, etc, etc. Your comment assumes that systems can only kill out of the evil intent of some people. Sadly, life is much more complex than that. Awful things still happen when everybody is doing their utmost. The problem is we can determine what is "pertinent information" only in hindsight. If we could know what is pertinent beforehand, no disasters would ever happen. Errors are made all the time in serious engineering. That can not be prevented. Test and oversight procedures are needed to find and solve these errors. Not the punishment of the individuals (note: plural!) who made the errors. The real culprits in this story are the FAA for their corruption, and that part of the Boeing organisation that did not pick up on the dangerous situation detected in the simulator.
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@herbertlewis8442 All systems have known issues. Everything will break. When exactly is governed by chance. A large part of engineering is to estimate the chance a particular fault will occur. If that chance is estimated to be low, the issue is left in the system, and rightly so. But sometimes, as in this case, the estimate is wrong, and people die. In hindsight, you can easily spot the error and condemn the people who made the estimate. But you have no right to do that until you understand the work they do. A world without risk does not exist. Air flight is still much safer than taking the car.
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@herbertlewis8442 "willful hiding of an important flaw in a design to save money" Most human enterprise is a willful attempt to save money. There was no willful hiding of a flaw, as the person(s) who did the hiding were not aware it was a flaw. Only in hindsight was the flaw obvious. "1,000 people who agree aren't stupid" No, but they are misguided by a documentary that was designed to inflame anger. Never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by lack of knowledge.
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@tonywilson4713 Are you trying to argue that no FMEA was performed for the 737 MAX? That is absurd. My point is that apparently, the FMEA is not a panacea that prevents all accidents. Even when all parties taking part are dedicated, serious professionals, like yourself. Systems engineering is all about filtering details and making abstractions. Sometimes the wrong details are filtered out, and the wrong abstractions are made, as happened in this case. Yes, lessons need to be learned. Yes, some individuals need to face consequences, especially in the higher echelons that created a culture in which safety took a back seat to commercial incentives, and in the FAA that gave Boeing far too much leeway. But murder charges? No way. <edit> In case of arguing that they didn't do the FMEA correctly: yeah duh. My point is that they tried to do the FMEA correctly. As you should know, if people fail to follow a process and f*ck up, it means there is something wrong with the process, not with the people.
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@herbertlewis8442 Boeing should have maintained a culture where anyone could raise safety issues to have them picked up at the highest levels. And the FAA should have seriously challenged the assumptions made by Boeing in their safety analysis. I am quite worried by the lines of reasoning and the hate in this thread. This is more like a hanging mob than people who seriously ask the question "what would I have done when placed in the same situation", and "what could be done to prevent it". In all likelihood, y'all would have done exactly the same as the individuals discussed in this hate program documentary. As someone has said, "Let he who is without sin throw the first stone".
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@tonywilson4713 You forget what really happened: They designed MCAS, did an FMEA, determined it was safe, then changed a little detail in MCAS that invalidated the FMEA without realising it. In spite of your righteous anger, this could well happen on one of your projects. As the video explained, the problem was that the pilots did not have the physical strength to change the trim. The FMEA had assumed that they did. Would you have spotted that wrong assumption?
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@herbertlewis8442 Hanging mobs are not known for doing justice to a case.
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@herbertlewis8442 All I hear in this thread is people clamoring for murder charges or even the death penalty for the people painted as culprits in this documentary. That sure sounds like a mob to me. Anyone who has standing is free to press charges against anyone, companies are already liable for damages if they neglected their responsibility, Boeing has paid huge sums already, yet it is not enough for you: you want to scapegoat specific people who you think did wrong. Well, I have news for you: everybody makes mistakes and wrong judgments. Some people are even arrogant pricks when they do it. But that does not make them criminals. Disasters like this can NEVER be pinned down to one or a few people. ALWAYS there are large groups of people involved who could have prevented the problem as well, had they done things differently. What makes you think the man who proclaimed a system was safe to be be ignored is more guilty than the people who invalidated that assumption? Because as far as he knew, what he was saying was true, and the engineers had been instructed to make it so. Yet someone changed a small detail in the system so that this was no longer the case. So who is more guilty? The man who said it was not dangerous, or the team that made it dangerous? Or the people who should have tested it? Or the team that reviewed the design changes? Or the people who should have challenged their conclusions? There are literally hundreds if not thousands of people involved. Each one could have and should have prevented these disasters. No-one wanted them to happen. And yet you want to pick out a few as scapegoats? Shame on you.
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