Internal Boeing emails on 737 max, "designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys"

[brainhulk]

'Designed by clowns': Boeing employees ridicule 737 MAX, regulators in internal messages

Boeing Co has released hundreds of internal messages that contained harshly critical comments about the development of the 737 MAX, including one that said the plane was "designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys".

www.reuters.com

In an instant messaging exchange on Feb. 8, 2018 - when the plane was in the air and eight months before the first of two fatal crashes, an employee asks another: "Would you put your family on a MAX simulator trained aircraft? I wouldn't".

The second employee responds: "No"

Whoah

 

[pauldun170]

And in a May 2018 message, an unnamed Boeing employee said: “I still haven’t been forgiven by god for the covering up I did last year.”

It involved a goat, his grandmother's wedding ring and 40 gallons of cranberry juice.
Despite displeasing the gods, fun was had by all that day.

 

[ShookKnight]

Muh capital market!! Muh capital market!!!

This is why the big scary government is needed sometimes - because corporations do NOT give a fuck. At all. Even when people die, there is no accountability. And no one get's punished.

Letting the market sort it out is utter nonsense when people are falling out of the sky.

 

[pete6032]

Truly sickening. I read this this morning. I couldn't live with myself if I was that blasé about people's safety.

 

[zinfamous]

It involved a goat, his grandmother's wedding ring and 40 gallons of cranberry juice.
Despite displeasing the gods, fun was had by all that day.

wonder what their god thinks about them now...

 

[sandorski]

Muh capital market!! Muh capital market!!!

This is why the big scary government is needed sometimes - because corporations do NOT give a fuck. At all. Even when people die, there is no accountability. And no one get's punished.

Letting the market sort it out is utter nonsense when people are falling out of the sky.

Indeed

 

[pauldun170]

Muh capital market!! Muh capital market!!!

This is why the big scary government is needed sometimes - because corporations do NOT give a fuck. At all. Even when people die, there is no accountability. And no one get's punished.

Letting the market sort it out is utter nonsense when people are falling out of the sky.

Not true.
If a plane crashes due to a cost cutting by senior executives and kills hundreds of people, those senior executive may end up getting let go from the company. Properly compensated as per contractual agreements of course.
Sure people or dead, families devastated and entire legacies demolished but some of those senior executives now have to cancel vacations or rethink that lease on a the Porsche they had there eye on. Hell, the reputational risk of mass death due to the leadership decisions made could result in stock price drop.
Doesn't anyone think about the markets?
This could impact the markets.
Isn't that suitable punishment?
As for government fines, a couple of million in fines might impact the travel budget for the year. Might even result in bonuses being reduced.
Can't have that happen

wonder what their god thinks about them now...

Ceiling god is watching you masturbate

 

[Red Squirrel]

I'm guessing like most companies, it's run by the bean counters. All the people who do the work have no say about anything. What happens is costs are cut in really bad places and the workers know it's bad but have to do it anyway. Sadly, it's cheaper to deal with deaths than to prevent them. That said it's pretty hard to build a plane that can survive a missile strike so this last crash is not really their fault.

 

[tracerbullet]

I would want to know how many people think this way, and how many are the opposite - take their jobs seriously and would be heartbroken at the idea that they missed something that caused a crash. My guess is there's a lot of each at the company and even more in between that just go in and do a job then go home and not think about it.

This might, or might not, be a systemic issue. It could also be 0.03% of the people working their and not much more than a good news story.

 

[rcpratt]

I would want to know how many people think this way, and how many are the opposite - take their jobs seriously and would be heartbroken at the idea that they missed something that caused a crash. My guess is there's a lot of each at the company and even more in between that just go in and do a job then go home and not think about it.

This might, or might not, be a systemic issue. It could also be 0.03% of the people working their and not much more than a good news story.

Can you imagine how many people are involved in the design, engineering, construction, and testing of a commercial airliner? This doesn't happen because a handful of people don’t give a fuck. This happens when systemic and cultural forces driven by leadership cause a company to prioritize efficiency over safety.

 

[Platypus]

Can you imagine how many people are involved in the design, engineering, construction, and testing of a commercial airliner? This doesn't happen because a handful of people don’t give a fuck. This happens when systemic and cultural forces driven by leadership cause a company to prioritize efficiency over safety.

Disclosure: I've done lots of internal security testing for major world companies so I see how the sauce is made for a lot of things. This post isn't about Boeing in particular though.

While what you said is true, in many cases engineering teams are responsible for what is tasked to them and do not get to see how their work always gets integrated into components of whatever is being produced. This is extremely common in defense and weapons technology companies especially. I make no statements about Boeing engineering teams but I can imagine this being "so and so's team's job and we will make sure our stuff performs to the specs they asked for" kinds of situations. I would say based on the work I've done and people I've spoken to over the years, most people take this stuff extremely seriously and want to do good things and care a lot about safety. There is almost always internal pushback for these situations in my experience. Generally when I've discovered a vulnerability or weakness, there are teams aware of it to some extent already and also concerned about it. The problem is that the higher up one goes the more the only concern has to be financial success. Security (and I treat the word safety as the same thing) sometimes gets overruled because of other factors(usually money). That's an unfortunate reality and I wish that wasn't the case, but that's the world we live in. You're definitely correct that it was a culture force that transformed how Boeing used to operate to present day. I've seen this same culture erode other companies I've done work for before. The MAX fiasco is an egregious example, but certainly not breaking new ground in this industry by any means in terms of cost cutting and rushing out a product though.

This kind of thing doesn't happen in a vacuum of course, and it's clear that lots of people internally were raising alarms about the technology, the lack of oversight in certification, etc. There should be criminal consequences for those who knew the danger after hearing it from their engineering teams and allowed this product to launch anyway in my opinion. Doubly so after the first crash where they tried to immediately claim it was pilot error. Boeing truly fucked up hard here and because there's basically one other serious competitor in this space for them, and the world relies on air transportation, they'll get away with it. Hell, even rewarded with a golden parachute for the CEO. When money is such a driving force in our world, and competition so stiff, dollars come before human lives and you get two airplanes full of people who should still be alive that aren't because of greed.

 

[OccamsToothbrush]

"designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys"

See, there's the problem right there. Have none of you people ever run away to join the circus? The clowns should be the ones supervising the monkeys, that's the way it works. Anything else is anarchy.

 

[sdifox]

Muh capital market!! Muh capital market!!!

This is why the big scary government is needed sometimes - because corporations do NOT give a fuck. At all. Even when people die, there is no accountability. And no one get's punished.

Letting the market sort it out is utter nonsense when people are falling out of the sky.

Boeing doesn't like the market at all. Look at what happened to Bombardier's C series.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

The history of the 737 MAX reminds me of the last 6-8 years at AT&T. Same clowns and monkeys running the show into oblivion.

 

[KMFJD]

Boeing charged with fraud over 737 Max, fined more than $2.5 billion

The Justice Department is not happy that Boeing wasn't straight with the FAA.

arstechnica.com

Boeing has agreed to pay more than $2.5 billion as part of a deferred prosecution agreement—that includes a criminal penalty of $243 million, $500 million to compensate the heirs of 346 crash victims, and $1.77 billion in compensation to Boeing's airline customers.

that's a hefty fine, how's their stock doing

 

[deadlyapp]

Boeing charged with fraud over 737 Max, fined more than $2.5 billion

The Justice Department is not happy that Boeing wasn't straight with the FAA.

arstechnica.com

Boeing has agreed to pay more than $2.5 billion as part of a deferred prosecution agreement—that includes a criminal penalty of $243 million, $500 million to compensate the heirs of 346 crash victims, and $1.77 billion in compensation to Boeing's airline customers.

that's a hefty fine, how's their stock doing

Probably will take a dip but will come back quickly - the market seems to like finality more than penalties unless it's going to make a company insolvent.

 

[Kaido]

Truly sickening. I read this this morning. I couldn't live with myself if I was that blasé about people's safety.

You should probably never go out to eat in that case lol (except also not lol). Lots of issues...contamination, wrong storing & cooking temperatures, sanitation issues, sick workers, spoiled food, etc.

Gross but True: Eating in Restaurants Doubles Your Risk of Getting Sick

In an analysis of years of data, Russian roulette may be hiding in the restaurant's Russian dressing.

www.takepart.com

“If a 17-year-old working at a restaurant made a mistake at home, three of us would get sick. If he makes it at a restaurant, 700 get sick. Restaurants magnify errors.”

 

[Torn Mind]

Government is merely an entity that can be bought. FAA needs experts. Experts that used to work for Boeing.

 

[Kaido]

Probably will take a dip but will come back quickly - the market seems to like finality more than penalties unless it's going to make a company insolvent.

This problem is universal: nearly every company is under-staffed with a crappy budget under unrealistic deadlines. Human beings are driven by incentives. If your corporate culture incentivizes stupidity (no training, no resources to get the job done, no management aid to help clear the way for getting the job done, stupid deadlines, stupid budgets, poor designs that get covered up by middle management to hide failures so things look good, etc.), then that's what people will be motivated to do. Companies aren't willing to admit to that until after they've gotten officially slapped on the hand, but yeah, mostly things go back to the status quo again.

 

[Torn Mind]

Muh capital market!! Muh capital market!!!

This is why the big scary government is needed sometimes - because corporations do NOT give a fuck. At all. Even when people die, there is no accountability. And no one get's punished.

Letting the market sort it out is utter nonsense when people are falling out of the sky.

Big Scary Government acts like an immortal corporation with coercive capabilities on the buyers. It will look out for the biggest meal tickets first and foremost.

If the private sector and government is antagonistic, regulation can work. But when the experts needed to serve in government...have to go through learn from the very companies they need to regulate, they'll help their buddies.

 

[Scarpozzi]

Bah....The Max design was a typical 2000's era engineering snafu.

1. Someone said, "Let's build a new 737 variant that can hold more passengers."
2. Engineers probably said, "The added weight will require a bigger engine though?"
3. Reply: "Do it...add a bigger engine then"
4. Engineers said, "The airframe sits too low, we'd have to move the engines forward on the wing and squash their housing design and that would generate more lift!"
5. Reply: "Make it work."

So they added bigger engines, moved them forward on the wing (the only way to 'make it work') and that generated more lift. The hard assets were only corrected in the fly-by-wire model through software by having it use elevator trim to even out the poor design. So....software fix to permanently resolve a hardware issue.

In my opinion, that jet will never be safe to fly because it will always require a computer to make those adjustments and I'm not sure it would fly itself otherwise. I doubt it would even glide accordingly for the same distance as another 737 variant, even if it had less weight.

I'm no engineer, but those are the assessments based on what I saw in the design and my understanding of the need of the computer. (not necessarily the computer failures that caused the crashes)

 

[KillerCharlie]

As an aerospace engineer, it's entertaining reading the ramblings of armchair aerodynamicists in this thread. I'm guessing not a single person here read the joint report, let alone has aerodynamic engineering experience with a Part 25 aircraft manufacturer

I've spent years of my life in wind tunnels, running CFD on entire HPC clusters, designing wings/LE/TE/other aerodynamics devices currently in production, working with the FAA, working with designated ARs, flight testing and icing testing, writing and signing certification documents, working with chief pilots and airlines pilots, and supporting airline customer issues.

 

[Scarpozzi]

As an aerospace engineer, it's entertaining reading the ramblings of armchair aerodynamicists in this thread. I'm guessing not a single person here read the joint report, let alone has aerodynamic engineering experience with an aircraft manufacturer.

I've spent years of my life in wind tunnels, running CFD on entire HPC clusters, designing wings/LE/TE/other aerodynamics devices currently in production, working with the FAA, working with designated ARs, flight testing and icing testing, writing and signing certification documents, working with chief pilots and airlines pilots, and supporting airline customer issues.

Good. What's your assessment of the Max with it's vastly different engine/wing modifications?

I didn't read this either, but it appears to follow my thoughts on lift/automatic trim and instability thereafter:

Boeing’s automatic trim for the 737 MAX was not disclosed to the Pilots - Leeham News and Analysis

By Bjorn Fehrm November 14, 2018, © Leeham News.: The automatic trim Boeing introduced on the 737 MAX, called MCAS, was news to us last week. Graver, it was news to the Pilots flying the MAX since 18... Read More

leehamnews.com

 

[KillerCharlie]

Good. What's your assessment of the Max with it's vastly different engine/wing modifications?

I could argue with every point written in this thread, but what's the point? People will believe what they want to. I do this kind of stuff for a living with other professionals and get paid. Arguing with the internet isn't a great use of my time.

The bottom line is the expectation of the pilots. The event was expected to be recognized as a standard runaway tail trim, solved by flipping 2 switches on the aisle stand to turn off the motor. After the first accident, a lot more guidance was given about more ways to avoid the situation, which the pilots in the 2nd accident also ignored.

The issue at hand is - should the pilots been expected to recognize the failure and act appropriately?

At the end of the day, these accidents will result in more automation, not less - and less reliance on the pilot to work through failures. On top of that, average pilot experience is much less than it was past, especially outside the U.S. Some operators have ab initio pilots training in the right seat of a 777 with 40 hours of experience.

If anyone does have questions, I can answer them via pm, otherwise I'm just gonna watch this thread with a bucket of popcorn.

 

[Artorias]

I wish you could select the plane model when buying a commercial ticket.