Rendered at 15:41:26 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
tzs 17 hours ago [-]
> The U.S. government on Friday said Boeing
can once again issue airworthiness certificates for its bestselling 737 Max aircraft and 787 Dreamliners, an authority that was stripped from the manufacturer after fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 of the 737 Max.
I'm a bit confused by this. From what I've read an "airworthiness certificate" is not a certificate that the aircraft design is good and safe. That would be a type certificate.
The airworthiness certificate is issued for a particular aircraft and certifies that it conforms to the approved design for that type of aircraft, all outstanding airworthiness directives applicable to the type have been applied, no unsafe alterations or repairs have been made, all required documentation and logs are present, the inspector doesn't see any damage, leaks, or other problems that could make it unsafe, and other things like that.
The two 737 MAX crashes had nothing to do with anything that would have been found during their airworthiness inspections. They were functioning exactly as they were designed to, as covered by their type certificate.
So what was the point of suspending Boeing's authority to do those inspections?
jordanb 15 hours ago [-]
The issue was actually the door plug scandal. It showed that Boeing's QC was compromised in their factory and they were not able to properly certify that the aircraft were being built as designed.
As an aside this a long talked-about problem with the South Carolina factory, that the place does not follow aerospace standards and practices. The door plug failure was the highest profile QC miss out of that factory.
rogerrogerr 15 hours ago [-]
SC wasn't really involved in this. The fuselage came from Spirit in Kansas, and final assembly happened in Renton.
epolanski 8 hours ago [-]
Does it matter? As a customer of the plane (and traveller) I'd like QA to be top notch and I would expect it to be final inspection at assembly stage.
jimbob45 11 hours ago [-]
Noob here, would that not also have potentially been found during routine maintenance inspections?
bombcar 10 hours ago [-]
It was such a way that you had to disassemble the entire thing to see it wasn't assembled correctly - routine maintenance is looking for wear items, not usually "they didn't put any bolts in".
stackghost 15 hours ago [-]
>So what was the point of suspending Boeing's authority to do those inspections?
Disclaimer: I used to work in airworthiness certification as well as maintenance and design modification engineering for the C-130, but not for any of the Boeing products.
You're generally correct. In layperson's terms, the Type Certificate is like the blueprint or the spec, and the individual airworthiness certificates are a certification that each aircraft coming off the assembly line is in conformance with the approved type design.
When the MCAS debacle happened, the FAA mandated a change to the type design, and further mandated embodiment of that design change through an Airworthiness Directive. This is the part that addressed the MCAS hazard condition. When they withheld Boeing's authority to issue certificates what that really gave them was, at the airframe serial number level, the ability to ensure that the modifications had been embodied correctly.
You're right that that final certification has little to do with correcting the underlying MCAS design flaw on the 737, but there were also quality issues with the 787, and because Boeing's in-house ODA issues those certificates acting as the FAA itself, and those certifications are essentially the last hurdle before delivery of the aircraft (and thus the last hurdle before revenue coming into Boeing's coffers), the FAA withheld that authority so that Boeing employees could not be unduly pressured by management's perverse incentives. Somebody elsewhere in these comments posted the OIG report that briefly touches on this pressure.
In fewer words, it was about ensuring independence in final airworthiness release, and ensuring Boeing's ODA could not be pressured by management who subscribe to the Jack Welch school of ethics.
------
Edited to add:
There is a valid argument to be made that the FAA didn't handle this situation correctly/adequately. For context, in aerospace when we identify that a hazard condition exists we classify both the severity and the likelihood of occurrence. So for example depending on the organization's risk acceptance matrix, one might have a hazard with high severity but extremely low chance of occurrence, and that might be considered acceptably safe (or not!).
The FAA now says that the back-and-forth they have been doing over the last however many months produced comparable production-quality findings regardless of which organization issued the certificates (Boeing's ODA or the FAA itself).
As best I could tell at the time this issue was a hot topic, when it withheld Boeing's issuance authority the FAA never clearly articulated:
- Which risks it was controlling,
- How much risk reduction it expected,
- What data would demonstrate effectiveness, and
- What objective conditions would permit termination of the withholding
So again, there's an argument that the FAA just sort of decided that they now have that Warm Fuzzy and everything is fine.
> The FAA stopped allowing Boeing to issue airworthiness certificates for 737 MAX airplanes in 2019 during their return to service following the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes, and for Boeing 787 airplanes in 2022 because of production quality issues.
taneq 16 hours ago [-]
“You can no longer certify aircraft of this design as safe” seems a reasonable response to a design flaw causing multiple crashes. My question would be whether the design flaws have been addressed. If not, then allowing them to keep making and certifying them does turn the whole exercise into a piece of theatre. Unfortunately, it’s a totally believable decision for some bureaucracies.
rcxdude 16 hours ago [-]
The two are unrelated, though. The airworthiness certificate is focused on whether a particular plane is built according to the design. It doesn't say anything about the design. And the planes were still being certified, just by the FAA instead of Boeing.
(Looking at a bit more research, I think this bit was revoked because during the investigation the FAA found that Boeing was skimping on these inspections too, but the details are a little unclear)
madikz 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
bushido 18 hours ago [-]
The 737 has had 14 major recertifications. The aircraft today looks/behaves nothing like the original from the 1960s.
The main motivation for recertifications comes from commercial pressure where if a aircraft is given a new number and not recertified, then the pilots have to be retrained.
Honestly, back when the 737 MAX debacle happened, a lot of consumers claimed that they would stop flying aircrafts if they ran into 737 MAXs. And I don't think it happened in enough numbers - or even enough to make news. Sales went through the roof, everything kept working.
Recertifications are very common. The issue really is is the aircraft is AS different and untested as the old MAXs, and I really can't see that happening again in the next decade or two atleast.
scottlamb 17 hours ago [-]
> Honestly, back when the 737 MAX debacle happened, a lot of consumers claimed that they would stop flying aircrafts if they ran into 737 MAXs. And I don't think it happened in enough numbers - or even enough to make news. Sales went through the roof, everything kept working.
Is this kind of consumer revolt even really possible?
If you feel strongly enough that you refuse to fly altogether, then of course you can avoid flying on a 737 MAX. But I think most people did not feel the risk was that high. They just want to select "guarantee no 737 MAX" when booking a flight, and as far as I can tell that option doesn't exist.
Even if the flight is not a 737 MAX when you book, they can and sometimes do change aircraft, and as far as I know there's no option to get your money back when they do. If you show up and see it's a 737 MAX...you either get on or you lose your money, and have to find some other way to get where you're going, right?
bombcar 10 hours ago [-]
If you really, really want to avoid an aircraft type, you book with an airline that simply doesn't fly them.
Sure, there's a tiny chance they put a chartered jet in for your flight, but that's exceedingly rare.
he0001 4 hours ago [-]
> If you really, really want to avoid an aircraft type, you book with an airline that simply doesn't fly them.
How do you do that? And which companies does not have these today?
- easyJet, Wizz Air, Vueling, ITA Airways, IndiGo, AirAsia, Cebu Pacific, Air Arabia
- Middle East Airlines, Tunisair, flynas
All of the above have no Boeing aircraft in their fleet at all.
Emirates doesn't fly the 737, but does fly Boeing aircraft.
inigyou 4 hours ago [-]
About half of airlines prefer Airbus planes, and it's pretty rare to have a mix of Boeing and Airbus AIUI.
Alupis 11 hours ago [-]
In 2013 there were approximately 24,000 737 flights per day[1] - likely more today. If narrowed to just the MAX variants, it's still thousands per day.
Two, albeit high profile, crashes out of all the daily MAX volume is simply not something to worry about - let alone influence your booking choices.
You're applying everyday casual risk analysis to the highly-regulated environment of commercial air transport, where the MAX crashes absolutely were out of the norm and well beyond accepted levels.
Bear in mind when the crashes occurred there were fewer than 100 MAX in service.
gmerc 9 hours ago [-]
Until you are on the plane. Sorry, but reasonably people and countries expect zero crashes and any single crash is worth worrying about because shareholder money should not trump a single human life.
jayofdoom 15 hours ago [-]
Honestly they kinda screwed over people -- like me -- who tried to avoid the MAX planes for a while. I'd specifically book around the MAX planes and then they would change equipment at the last minute into a MAX. There is no meaningful "knob" an aviation consumer can turn to express an aircraft preference, and given how US airspace works, you often don't have a meaningful choice in carrier (unless you're willing to take on extra stops).
11 hours ago [-]
archagon 12 hours ago [-]
Sure there is. Just fly carriers that use an Airbus fleet. It’s honestly pretty trivial.
jfaat 12 hours ago [-]
In the US (parent mentioned US specifically) I think that's just Frontier now that Spirit is gone. I mean technically that's doable sure but idk if I would say trivial it's really limited on routes and the experience is terrible from what I understand.
archagon 9 hours ago [-]
In my experience JetBlue and American Airlines usually fly Airbus.
kube-system 17 hours ago [-]
The #1 rule of marketing is that people's actions rarely line up with what they say they're going to do.
stasomatic 2 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately. Enthusiast "want" a manual transmission car but almost none buy. Can't blame the makers.
jrockway 16 hours ago [-]
Sort by price ascending and pick the first result.
jbm 16 hours ago [-]
I live in Calgary. Both major airlines cost the same. There is no difference in sorting. Both airlines use the 737.
I lived in Tokyo. I used to spend more to avoid getting accosted at the US border. A lot more.
You can't call it choice when your vendors all offer the same product for the same price.
MatmaRex 12 hours ago [-]
In Europe "no 737 MAX" basically means "no Ryanair". Depending on how you feel about Ryanair, avoiding the 737 MAX can be very easy.
In other places, like the US, they may not be practical to avoid.
cryo32 11 hours ago [-]
This is what I do. No Ryanair. Everyone else runs A320 series across Europe. I usually just fly easyJet.
odiroot 10 hours ago [-]
There's more and better reasons than MAX to avoid Ryanair.
Sadly Polish national airlines (among others) also went hard on 737MAX8 so it's not only the budget ones.
warumdarum 8 hours ago [-]
The things you do for NATO protection. You buy all franchise equipment only for the franchise giver to walk out on the deal.
dataflow 10 hours ago [-]
> In Europe "no 737 MAX" basically means "no Ryanair". Depending on how you feel about Ryanair, avoiding the 737 MAX can be very easy.
Honestly no Ryan Air is the right decision for oh so many reasons, but yes the horrible 737-Max is top on the list
pudgywalsh 17 hours ago [-]
Consumers are indeed very concerned... that they be able to purchase £49 tickets on RyanAir.
ghaff 17 hours ago [-]
And then they complain about seat sizes and baggage dimensions.
Dylan16807 13 hours ago [-]
People want to get what they're promised in a reasonable fashion. If the prices are hiding something like nonstandard seats or unreasonable baggage procedures, then that's a legitimate problem, not something they should shut up about because they should have known.
ghaff 36 minutes ago [-]
They're getting from Point A to Point B for a pittance. What more should they expect?
17 hours ago [-]
bmitc 8 hours ago [-]
I have avoided flying on a 737 MAX and have even asked about it at gates when a plane was switched.
Part of the problem though is that many, many, many routes were straight up removed during and after COVID and still haven't returned. There is often no choice, particularly with certain companies like Southwest. However, I haven't flown Southwest since I learned that they were basically complicit, if not directly involved, in Boeing's 737 MAX issues.
15 hours ago [-]
carabiner 17 hours ago [-]
Toyota had the largest recall in history for the unintended acceleration debacle. Yes, lots of people were saying they'd never set foot in a toyota again. Now people don't even remember it.
munk-a 17 hours ago [-]
Just to comprehend this a bit better - it sounds like the FAA had stripped Boeing of the ability to self-recertify and actually sent inspectors for the most recent certifications. After several successful certifications and what would appear, to the inspectors, to be real process improvements, they're now re-granting Boeing the ability to self-recertify when self-recertification is allowed?
This is well outside my knowledge domain so I'm not trying to make any statements on whether this was correct, but rather to better comprehend the change.
rogerrogerr 17 hours ago [-]
This is accurate, except “recertify” is the wrong verb. This is about signing off on individual airplanes.
cebert 18 hours ago [-]
This is absolutely frightening.
bobthebob 17 hours ago [-]
Why?
armada651 13 hours ago [-]
Having airworthiness certification done by an independent organization not beholden to Boeing's shareholders makes much more sense to me. Giving the authority to Boeing to do its own airworthiness certification feels like the fox guarding the hen house.
niffydroid 8 hours ago [-]
But independents would need to be embedded into the company every step of the way, it would get to be point they would look exactly like Boeing employees.
But what does happen is audits where the work is checked
dudinax 6 hours ago [-]
That's one way it could go but it doesn't have to. The NRC guy walking into a comtrol room is not anybody's friend.
amomchilov 3 hours ago [-]
Different incentives.
18 hours ago [-]
rogerrogerr 17 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
estearum 17 hours ago [-]
Wow you got 'em.
Oncologist: You have Stage 4 cancer
You: Wow, that's frightening
Oncologist: You've had it at least since September, were you frightened then?
Brilliant argument. No longer concerned!
cromka 17 hours ago [-]
What if they didn't know that and simply assumed self-certification simply would never happen again?
Or are you implying that "since no plane crashed since September, they're safe going forward"?
"Read the article". Clearly reading is not enough.
tverbeure 17 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
warumdarum 8 hours ago [-]
If the deterenc3 to newplanes is type certifications of pilots, how would a law change look that circumvents this hurdle?
blitzar 17 hours ago [-]
Who gave whom a golden airplane ... totally worth it, for them at least.
16 hours ago [-]
ronnieron 17 hours ago [-]
I only fly airbus. If it’s Boeing, I ain’t going.
ifwinterco 8 hours ago [-]
I don't go that far and I'm not exactly scared to fly on a Boeing (because statistically it's still very safe, I ride motorbikes which is probably 100x more dangerous etc etc).
However I definitely prefer flying on an Airbus, put it that way
markasoftware 17 hours ago [-]
[Deleted]
kube-system 17 hours ago [-]
This is not exactly the same thing, this isn't Boeing being allowed to sign off on their design -- this is only the airworthiness certificate which means "this particular airplane we just built follows the spec which was already otherwise approved".
brikym 17 hours ago [-]
All I read is that the US govt signs on off US export. I'd be surprised if there was not pressure on FAA to lower the bar.
greenavocado 3 hours ago [-]
We investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing
greenleafone7 17 hours ago [-]
Yeah, not thanks. A company being kept alive by the US government is not one I'll ever trust with my life.
linzhangrun 8 hours ago [-]
They should never have allowed aircraft manufacturers to sign their own airworthiness certificates in the first place. Are there that many new aircraft types every year? What is the FAA for? Why does it not take responsibility for certification itself, instead of trusting the aircraft manufacturer’s “Trust Me Bro”?
shevy-java 18 hours ago [-]
Until the next mass crash ...
UltraSane 18 hours ago [-]
The EU should refuse to allow such planes to enter their airspace.
greatgib 18 hours ago [-]
Totally insane. Repeating the same errors as in the past and hoping for a better outcome...
Only corruption can explain that...
bob001 18 hours ago [-]
Let's see if the EU shows some backbone or not.
shevy-java 18 hours ago [-]
The EU is like a tiger - without teeth, fur or claws. I think the only thing that works here is total boycott of airplanes that constantly unalive people through mass crashes. (Wikipedia really gathers useful data here in a simple-to-read manner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...)
freeone3000 17 hours ago [-]
You can and should say the word “kill”.
inigyou 4 hours ago [-]
Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Exterminate. Exterminate. Humans must die. Humans must die. Exterminate. Exterminate. Exterminate. Exterminate.
Am I doing it right?
Octoth0rpe 14 hours ago [-]
> The EU is like a tiger - without teeth, fur or claws.
EU regs forced apple to move to type-c. They appear to be moving towards either requiring replaceable batteries, or requiring a higher quality batter (larger % of original charge after 1000 cycles). Those both seem valuable to consumers, and coming from a position of regulatory strength.
15155 4 hours ago [-]
> coming from a position of regulatory strength
Power is defined by the ability to force people to do things they don't want to do - not things that they might have done anyway eventually or that they can feasibly see might benefit them.
In this specific case, the EU gave Apple a golden bridge to retreat over by deprecating the 30-pin cable. If Apple did it themselves, people would have been pissed that they had to buy yet another charger. "Europe is the bad guy, not Apple."
worik 17 hours ago [-]
Interesting analogy, maybe a house cat?
I think a better analogy is "The EU is like a lumbering elephant. You can steer it, but only if you know how. Otherwise it just keeps on lumbering"
Airbus was a bureaucrats wet dream, and by modern Biz Bro standards should never have got off the ground.
Now it rules the skies. Boeing, having drunk the financial Kool Aid is wilting
Tortoise and the hare?
moomin 17 hours ago [-]
It turns out that sometimes you really do want health and safety obsessed bureaucrats.
cindyllm 17 hours ago [-]
[dead]
bobthebob 17 hours ago [-]
Can you explain exactly why this is bad?
atoav 10 hours ago [-]
There has been a history of problems with that exact airframe where people died. People dying is usually considered bad.
Now root cause of the issue that airframe had before was that Boeing was given the leeway to certify it themselves with too little oversight by the FAA. In short: the airframe of the Boeing 737 MAX is so far away from the originally certified 737 airframe it is ridiculous to consider them the same airplane. The adjustments Boeing made via softeare to deal with the physical changes (like putting the much bigger engines forward so they have enough clearance under the wings without having to certifying this as a new airframe) was the cause of the incidents. A truly independent FAA would have never even remotely accepted that.
estearum 17 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
rcxdude 16 hours ago [-]
I would assume the poster is asking for a more detailed explanation of the implied connection between this and the plane crashes.
estearum 16 hours ago [-]
Well that is profoundly lazy.
Here, put it into your favorite LLM: "Is there a suspected or established relationship between Boeing's self-certification and the 737 MAX crashes?"
That will almost certainly link to the thousands of pages of Congressional, OIG, FAA testimony, investigation, and reporting.
Does GP think Boeing's self-certification authority was revoked after the accidents just for funsies? By random chance?
rcxdude 15 hours ago [-]
I did, in fact, spend a bit of time trying to look this up, because as pointed out by other comments, it was not entirely clear what relationship this revocation (which is about inspecting built aircraft vs the design) had to do with the crashes (which were primarily the result of a faulty design). I didn't find a particularly illuminating summary other than maybe the investigation also turned up some other problems.
More to the point, the original poster was implying that there would be a relationship between the reinstatement of Boeing's self-certification and future crashes. Which I think would be worth some deeper analysis beyond 'corporations bad'.
I perused that document. It says quite a bit on how the FAA needs to work on type certificates, but seems limited to that. It says nothing on airworthiness certificates.
I'm assuming you know this, but the reason people say there's a hard difference on this is because they really are two different topics covering two different things.
For the uninitiated, and simplified. For a particular aircraft you are about to board to be legally allowed to fly it needs an airworthiness certificate. An airworthiness certificate says _that_ particular airplane is essentially _identical_ to a prototype (or set of identical prototypes) that the manufacture has flight tested and demonstrated is safe to the certifying authority. The formal acceptance of the prototypes safety is called a "Type" certificate.
The ability to say "we made this identical to our prototypes" is what the FAA is restoring the authority of Boeing to self certify, and is a _normal_ thing for a manufacturer to have. It's _abnormal_ for a manufacturer to not have that, as it's the certifying authority basically saying "you don't know how to physically construct airplanes".
The document referenced says the FAA essentially accepted proofs / was pressured to accept assertions from Boeing that the type was actually safe, when it was not. That's basically saying Boeing didn't know how to _design_ aircraft.
estearum 4 hours ago [-]
Right, but the crux of OIG's finding is that there isn't a hard difference between the two.
The plane was not built to the spec that FAA type-certified. But at the same time it wasn't clearly out of certification either.
There were significant changes made to MCAS since the the type certification. However, there was no clear delineation of what types of post-certification changes would require another FAA type certification.
The permeability of the two types of certifications and the amount of design changes that can happen between them is the entire problem OIG is pointing out.
> FAA essentially accepted proofs / was pressured to accept assertions from Boeing that the type was actually safe
No, the document says Boeing's ODA team was pressured to accept assertions from Boeing's management. The Boeing ODA team is employed by Boeing. They are given de facto self-certification authority either by actually self-certifying (in the airworthiness case), or by choosing what it flags to FAA for external certification (in the design/type case).
akerl_ 16 hours ago [-]
As has been noted in several of the comments, the crashes were a result of a faulty design, not aircraft failing to meet the design.
The self-certification here wasn’t part of the chain of events that led to the crashes; it appears to have been related to other issues the FAA uncovered as a side effect of their investigation.
estearum 16 hours ago [-]
As has been noted in the actual reports, the crashes (as is true of all crashes) were the result of a specific chain of failures across several functions and organizations.
One component of that chain of failures is the self-certification process. If the FAA had the resource and mandate to actually understand each aircraft design change, then it's very likely (not guaranteed, but very likely) that the MCAS design having a single point of failure on the AoA sensor would have been flagged as problematic by FAA.
aaronmdjones 15 hours ago [-]
The addition of MCAS to the 737 MAX received type approval by the FAA in response to Boeing's documentation, not in response to anything Boeing approved or issued. No aircraft manufacturer has ever been allowed to issue a type certificate.
The self-certification process (airworthiness certificates) is the manufacturer (rather than the regulator's inspectors) stating "this one specific aircraft with serial number _______ has been built according to the design covered by its type certificate". Nothing more.
In other words, an airworthiness certificate only specifies that a specific aircraft is airworthy /because/ it is built according to an airworthy design. Whether the design is safe or not has always only been up to the regulator to decide. In this case, the regulator dropped the ball and approved an unsafe design. If Boeing was not allowed to self-certify their own aircraft, the FAA would still have issued airworthiness certificates for them, including the two aircraft that would have gone on to kill hundreds of people, because they were built according to the design the FAA approved.
estearum 15 hours ago [-]
No, an early, low-risk version of MCAS was proposed and given type approval by FAA. Then the MCAS design was changed iteratively and continuously without prompting another type approval process. Thenceforth, Boeing's ODA self-certification process was the only statutorily required step that could have caught that the post-type approval changes actually increased the risk significantly.
You should read the OIG report. It actually discusses all of this. It is absolutely possible an FAA cert would've missed the MCAS issue as well, but as OIG points out, one variable was significant commercial pressure on Boeing's ODA to approve the (iterated-since-type-approved)-MCAS. Presumably FAA staff would be less susceptible to this type of commercial pressure.
geonineties 11 hours ago [-]
You are still conflating the process of manufacturing vs able to design a safe aircraft. The ability of Boeing to correctly manufacture an aircraft to it's design was not the cause of 737 Max 8 crashes. The ability of Boeing to create a safe design was. (As an aside: I don't think self certification of a design should be a thing)
Dylan16807 12 hours ago [-]
Now this comment is a great answer to the "why" up above! As opposed to implying the question itself is stupid.
akerl_ 16 hours ago [-]
Design changes are not part of the self certification process, they’re part of the type certification process, which has always been handled by the FAA.
estearum 15 hours ago [-]
Design changes de facto are part of the self-cert process because it had no requirement for FAA oversight of post-flight design changes.
DOT OIG disagrees that this played no role. Here's from Page 2 of their report, i.e. the entire "Findings" summary:
While FAA and Boeing followed the established certification process for the 737 MAX 8, we identified limitations in FAA’s guidance and processes that impacted certification and led to a significant misunderstanding of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), the flight control software identified as contributing to the two accidents. First, FAA’s certification guidance does not adequately address integrating new technologies into existing aircraft models. Second, FAA did not have a complete understanding of Boeing’s safety assessments performed on MCAS until after the first accident. Communication gaps further hindered the effectiveness of the certification process. In addition, management and oversight weaknesses limit FAA’s ability to assess and mitigate risks with the Boeing ODA. For example, FAA has not yet implemented a risk-based approach to ODA oversight, and engineers in FAA’s Boeing oversight office continue to face challenges in balancing certification and oversight responsibilities. Moreover, the Boeing ODA process and structure do not ensure ODA personnel are adequately independent. While the Agency has taken steps to develop a risk-based oversight model and address concerns of undue pressure at the Boeing ODA, it is not clear that FAA’s current oversight structure and processes can effectively identify future high-risk safety concerns at the ODA.
You are confidently acting like you understand this process, while repeatedly confusing design certification (of the type) vs. airworthiness certification (of individual airplanes).
estearum 15 hours ago [-]
In the above OIG finding, can you please explain what "ODA" means?
Maybe DOT OIG is confused? Big if true!
rogerrogerr 15 hours ago [-]
Nah, you can figure that out pretty easily yourself, and I get the sense your question is not in good faith. Earlier in this thread you called someone "profoundly lazy" for asking a less simple question.
There are many types of designation in the system; your quote above is _not_ about Production Certification ODA staff (which this article is about), and indeed there is no world where Production Certification ODA would be expected to find the MCAS issue your quote is about. Those would be Type Certification ODA folks.
estearum 15 hours ago [-]
You should go read the OIG report. Kind of a bummer because they put all this work into a document that you're just sitting here exemplifying the exact misunderstanding that they found as the major issue.
bobthebob 15 hours ago [-]
Yikes dude, you call me lazy. This is hilarious.
estearum 15 hours ago [-]
Oh it was a rhetorical question, which is why sibling declined to answer.
15 hours ago [-]
bobthebob 15 hours ago [-]
I think using an LLM to confidently reply to online commenters is more profound, but I digress
estearum 15 hours ago [-]
Not sure if you just gave up halfway through the 4-sentence long comment, but I was actually suggesting that you use it to go find the thousands of pages of high-quality source information.
bobthebob 12 hours ago [-]
Which is a lazy reply.
bobthebob 15 hours ago [-]
Lazy Reddit style comments, do you ever contribute?
I look down the chain of these comments and looks like others had no problem
estearum 15 hours ago [-]
No what you see down the chain of comments are people confidently repeating the exact pattern that the OIG report on this failure actually blames for it.
They keep insisting there's some binary distinction between type certification and production certification. The entire crux of OIG's diagnosis is that this is actually a much more permeable and fluid process, and the permeability of it is exactly what allowed a faulty MCAS design to make it to production.
kube-system 17 hours ago [-]
I have read that self-issuance of airworthiness certificates has been normal since the 1950s. Given that, I don't think the issue is due to regulatory corruption but an issue at Boeing which has (hopefully) been resolved.
estearum 17 hours ago [-]
"The issue" at Boeing is obscene levels of financialization which, of course, has not been "solved."
appreciatorBus 16 hours ago [-]
Human life has been “finacialized” for thousands of years and is better for it. The word is meaningless.
I don’t want to barter my chickens for your shoe leather.
estearum 16 hours ago [-]
No it's actually bad when financialization reaches such a degree that planes fall out of the sky.
You as an oncologist: "cells have been dividing for thousands of years and are better off for it. the word is meaningless. I would hate to be a single-celled organism." lmao
Great insight! Therefore there's no such thing as pathological cell division or pathological financialization. Or maybe it's just if someone is super super super smart, they get so smart they somehow lose the ability to distinguish between productive and pathological financialization, and then they get to make asinine comments on HN.
appreciatorBus 15 hours ago [-]
Cancer is a disease that attacks living organisms, similar to how collectivism attacks living societies.
"Financialization" is a 7 syllable word with no definition.
There is nothing about how Boeing builds & sells planes today that is qualitatively different than how they did it 50 years ago. Yes I am familiar with the concern that engineers hold less sway than previously and I agree this is a concern. I would not be shocked to discover that it's true. But this is not a new thing.
People who sell a thing, be they multinational airline manufactures, or a kid selling lemonade, have been able to profit by lying or skimping on quality since the dawn of time.
If your concern is that Boeing will skimp on quality & safety, then say that, instead of a buzz word like "financialization"
I have no idea where you came across the word, but when I see it used, there's generally a lot of handwaving and some vague implication that it's some new concept/activity that started in the 1970's. The only consistencies I've observed in attempts to define it is that money = financialization or "number go up" = financialization, and the speaker is generally uncomfortable with money as one of the tools we use to organize society.
inigyou 4 hours ago [-]
There is nothing qualitatively different about your cancer cells and your regular cells. That's why it's so hard to treat cancer. Yes I am concerned the genes that modulate cell division are not working as well as previously and I agree this is a concern. I would not be shocked to discover that it's true. But this is not a new thing. Cells that divide have been able to divide since the dawn of time. If your concern is that a cell will excessively divide, then say that, instead of a buzz word like "cancer"
I have no idea where you came across that word, but when I see it used, there's generally a lot of handwaving and some vague implication that it's bad. The only consistencies I've observed in attempts to define it is that cell division = cancer or "uncontrollable replication" = cancer, and the speaker is generally uncomfortable with cellular natural selection as a driving force behind evolution.
estearum 15 hours ago [-]
I said "cell division," not cancer.
Financialization, in this context, refers to the process by which financial results, especially those legible to capital markets, exert pressure on the upstream industrial/corporate processes and inputs that produce those financial results.
"Excessive" or "obscene" or "pathological" financialization is when that feedback loop or reverse pressure ends up producing negative impacts on industrial/corporate processes, often in pursuit of shorter term positive effects on the financial results.
The exact mechanisms of this have been extremely well-documented in the numerous reports created in the wake of the 737 MAX failures.
Could you try leveling a substantive response now instead of a chain of strawmen and associative "the vibes of the speaker are generally off" type dismissals?
appreciatorBus 14 hours ago [-]
Capital markets have existed for hundreds of years. They are not doing anything today that they were not doing in 1602.
I am familiar with the 737 MAX critique and I'm very comfortable saying that Boeing was sloppy and cut corners. I just don't think the decisions they faced and failed on are new. 300 years ago someone built someone a ship and cheaped out in some way and it sank. Call it cheating/lying/scamming if you like, but the word "financialization" does not help anyone understand what's going on.
estearum 14 hours ago [-]
No actually there was a pretty specific transition in American business culture to shareholder primacy in the 70s-80s with measurable behavior changes across corporate America, including executive incentive structures.
inigyou 4 hours ago [-]
In 1602 a capital market was where a group of 20 people would pool their money to start a new company to build a ship and go to India and steal some resources and then they would be paid out of those resources in proportion to the money they put in. Is that how they work today?
linzhangrun 8 hours ago [-]
The problem of "financialization" should also be an old topic by now. It mainly means non-technical bureaucrats (for example, people from finance) taking over the top, making the company focus on maximizing short-term profit and lose its real long-term value.
Just look at Intel.
xgulfie 15 hours ago [-]
People are Boeing to die
t1234s 12 hours ago [-]
Recently I was on the tarmac watching people load up on a 737 MAX on an island runway where the takeoff direction was TOWARDS a mountain. I said a prayer.
I'm a bit confused by this. From what I've read an "airworthiness certificate" is not a certificate that the aircraft design is good and safe. That would be a type certificate.
The airworthiness certificate is issued for a particular aircraft and certifies that it conforms to the approved design for that type of aircraft, all outstanding airworthiness directives applicable to the type have been applied, no unsafe alterations or repairs have been made, all required documentation and logs are present, the inspector doesn't see any damage, leaks, or other problems that could make it unsafe, and other things like that.
The two 737 MAX crashes had nothing to do with anything that would have been found during their airworthiness inspections. They were functioning exactly as they were designed to, as covered by their type certificate.
So what was the point of suspending Boeing's authority to do those inspections?
As an aside this a long talked-about problem with the South Carolina factory, that the place does not follow aerospace standards and practices. The door plug failure was the highest profile QC miss out of that factory.
Disclaimer: I used to work in airworthiness certification as well as maintenance and design modification engineering for the C-130, but not for any of the Boeing products.
You're generally correct. In layperson's terms, the Type Certificate is like the blueprint or the spec, and the individual airworthiness certificates are a certification that each aircraft coming off the assembly line is in conformance with the approved type design.
When the MCAS debacle happened, the FAA mandated a change to the type design, and further mandated embodiment of that design change through an Airworthiness Directive. This is the part that addressed the MCAS hazard condition. When they withheld Boeing's authority to issue certificates what that really gave them was, at the airframe serial number level, the ability to ensure that the modifications had been embodied correctly.
You're right that that final certification has little to do with correcting the underlying MCAS design flaw on the 737, but there were also quality issues with the 787, and because Boeing's in-house ODA issues those certificates acting as the FAA itself, and those certifications are essentially the last hurdle before delivery of the aircraft (and thus the last hurdle before revenue coming into Boeing's coffers), the FAA withheld that authority so that Boeing employees could not be unduly pressured by management's perverse incentives. Somebody elsewhere in these comments posted the OIG report that briefly touches on this pressure.
In fewer words, it was about ensuring independence in final airworthiness release, and ensuring Boeing's ODA could not be pressured by management who subscribe to the Jack Welch school of ethics.
------
Edited to add:
There is a valid argument to be made that the FAA didn't handle this situation correctly/adequately. For context, in aerospace when we identify that a hazard condition exists we classify both the severity and the likelihood of occurrence. So for example depending on the organization's risk acceptance matrix, one might have a hazard with high severity but extremely low chance of occurrence, and that might be considered acceptably safe (or not!).
The FAA now says that the back-and-forth they have been doing over the last however many months produced comparable production-quality findings regardless of which organization issued the certificates (Boeing's ODA or the FAA itself).
As best I could tell at the time this issue was a hot topic, when it withheld Boeing's issuance authority the FAA never clearly articulated:
- Which risks it was controlling,
- How much risk reduction it expected,
- What data would demonstrate effectiveness, and
- What objective conditions would permit termination of the withholding
So again, there's an argument that the FAA just sort of decided that they now have that Warm Fuzzy and everything is fine.
> The FAA stopped allowing Boeing to issue airworthiness certificates for 737 MAX airplanes in 2019 during their return to service following the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes, and for Boeing 787 airplanes in 2022 because of production quality issues.
(Looking at a bit more research, I think this bit was revoked because during the investigation the FAA found that Boeing was skimping on these inspections too, but the details are a little unclear)
The main motivation for recertifications comes from commercial pressure where if a aircraft is given a new number and not recertified, then the pilots have to be retrained.
Honestly, back when the 737 MAX debacle happened, a lot of consumers claimed that they would stop flying aircrafts if they ran into 737 MAXs. And I don't think it happened in enough numbers - or even enough to make news. Sales went through the roof, everything kept working.
Recertifications are very common. The issue really is is the aircraft is AS different and untested as the old MAXs, and I really can't see that happening again in the next decade or two atleast.
Is this kind of consumer revolt even really possible?
If you feel strongly enough that you refuse to fly altogether, then of course you can avoid flying on a 737 MAX. But I think most people did not feel the risk was that high. They just want to select "guarantee no 737 MAX" when booking a flight, and as far as I can tell that option doesn't exist.
Even if the flight is not a 737 MAX when you book, they can and sometimes do change aircraft, and as far as I know there's no option to get your money back when they do. If you show up and see it's a 737 MAX...you either get on or you lose your money, and have to find some other way to get where you're going, right?
Sure, there's a tiny chance they put a chartered jet in for your flight, but that's exceedingly rare.
How do you do that? And which companies does not have these today?
By choosing to spend your money elsewhere.
> And which companies does not have these today?
- JetBlue, Frontier Airlines, Spirit Airlines, Volaris, Breeze Airways
- easyJet, Wizz Air, Vueling, ITA Airways, IndiGo, AirAsia, Cebu Pacific, Air Arabia
- Middle East Airlines, Tunisair, flynas
All of the above have no Boeing aircraft in their fleet at all.
Emirates doesn't fly the 737, but does fly Boeing aircraft.
Two, albeit high profile, crashes out of all the daily MAX volume is simply not something to worry about - let alone influence your booking choices.
[1] - https://chinaerospace.oss-cn-beijing.aliyuncs.com/18.1%20%E6...
Bear in mind when the crashes occurred there were fewer than 100 MAX in service.
I lived in Tokyo. I used to spend more to avoid getting accosted at the US border. A lot more.
You can't call it choice when your vendors all offer the same product for the same price.
In other places, like the US, they may not be practical to avoid.
Sadly Polish national airlines (among others) also went hard on 737MAX8 so it's not only the budget ones.
Eh?
- https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/AEA1517
- https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/LOT279
- https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/ICE613
Part of the problem though is that many, many, many routes were straight up removed during and after COVID and still haven't returned. There is often no choice, particularly with certain companies like Southwest. However, I haven't flown Southwest since I learned that they were basically complicit, if not directly involved, in Boeing's 737 MAX issues.
This is well outside my knowledge domain so I'm not trying to make any statements on whether this was correct, but rather to better comprehend the change.
Oncologist: You have Stage 4 cancer
You: Wow, that's frightening
Oncologist: You've had it at least since September, were you frightened then?
Brilliant argument. No longer concerned!
Or are you implying that "since no plane crashed since September, they're safe going forward"?
"Read the article". Clearly reading is not enough.
However I definitely prefer flying on an Airbus, put it that way
Am I doing it right?
EU regs forced apple to move to type-c. They appear to be moving towards either requiring replaceable batteries, or requiring a higher quality batter (larger % of original charge after 1000 cycles). Those both seem valuable to consumers, and coming from a position of regulatory strength.
Power is defined by the ability to force people to do things they don't want to do - not things that they might have done anyway eventually or that they can feasibly see might benefit them.
In this specific case, the EU gave Apple a golden bridge to retreat over by deprecating the 30-pin cable. If Apple did it themselves, people would have been pissed that they had to buy yet another charger. "Europe is the bad guy, not Apple."
I think a better analogy is "The EU is like a lumbering elephant. You can steer it, but only if you know how. Otherwise it just keeps on lumbering"
Airbus was a bureaucrats wet dream, and by modern Biz Bro standards should never have got off the ground.
Now it rules the skies. Boeing, having drunk the financial Kool Aid is wilting
Tortoise and the hare?
Now root cause of the issue that airframe had before was that Boeing was given the leeway to certify it themselves with too little oversight by the FAA. In short: the airframe of the Boeing 737 MAX is so far away from the originally certified 737 airframe it is ridiculous to consider them the same airplane. The adjustments Boeing made via softeare to deal with the physical changes (like putting the much bigger engines forward so they have enough clearance under the wings without having to certifying this as a new airframe) was the cause of the incidents. A truly independent FAA would have never even remotely accepted that.
Here, put it into your favorite LLM: "Is there a suspected or established relationship between Boeing's self-certification and the 737 MAX crashes?"
That will almost certainly link to the thousands of pages of Congressional, OIG, FAA testimony, investigation, and reporting.
Does GP think Boeing's self-certification authority was revoked after the accidents just for funsies? By random chance?
More to the point, the original poster was implying that there would be a relationship between the reinstatement of Boeing's self-certification and future crashes. Which I think would be worth some deeper analysis beyond 'corporations bad'.
For the uninitiated, and simplified. For a particular aircraft you are about to board to be legally allowed to fly it needs an airworthiness certificate. An airworthiness certificate says _that_ particular airplane is essentially _identical_ to a prototype (or set of identical prototypes) that the manufacture has flight tested and demonstrated is safe to the certifying authority. The formal acceptance of the prototypes safety is called a "Type" certificate.
The ability to say "we made this identical to our prototypes" is what the FAA is restoring the authority of Boeing to self certify, and is a _normal_ thing for a manufacturer to have. It's _abnormal_ for a manufacturer to not have that, as it's the certifying authority basically saying "you don't know how to physically construct airplanes".
The document referenced says the FAA essentially accepted proofs / was pressured to accept assertions from Boeing that the type was actually safe, when it was not. That's basically saying Boeing didn't know how to _design_ aircraft.
The plane was not built to the spec that FAA type-certified. But at the same time it wasn't clearly out of certification either.
There were significant changes made to MCAS since the the type certification. However, there was no clear delineation of what types of post-certification changes would require another FAA type certification.
The permeability of the two types of certifications and the amount of design changes that can happen between them is the entire problem OIG is pointing out.
> FAA essentially accepted proofs / was pressured to accept assertions from Boeing that the type was actually safe
No, the document says Boeing's ODA team was pressured to accept assertions from Boeing's management. The Boeing ODA team is employed by Boeing. They are given de facto self-certification authority either by actually self-certifying (in the airworthiness case), or by choosing what it flags to FAA for external certification (in the design/type case).
The self-certification here wasn’t part of the chain of events that led to the crashes; it appears to have been related to other issues the FAA uncovered as a side effect of their investigation.
One component of that chain of failures is the self-certification process. If the FAA had the resource and mandate to actually understand each aircraft design change, then it's very likely (not guaranteed, but very likely) that the MCAS design having a single point of failure on the AoA sensor would have been flagged as problematic by FAA.
The self-certification process (airworthiness certificates) is the manufacturer (rather than the regulator's inspectors) stating "this one specific aircraft with serial number _______ has been built according to the design covered by its type certificate". Nothing more.
In other words, an airworthiness certificate only specifies that a specific aircraft is airworthy /because/ it is built according to an airworthy design. Whether the design is safe or not has always only been up to the regulator to decide. In this case, the regulator dropped the ball and approved an unsafe design. If Boeing was not allowed to self-certify their own aircraft, the FAA would still have issued airworthiness certificates for them, including the two aircraft that would have gone on to kill hundreds of people, because they were built according to the design the FAA approved.
You should read the OIG report. It actually discusses all of this. It is absolutely possible an FAA cert would've missed the MCAS issue as well, but as OIG points out, one variable was significant commercial pressure on Boeing's ODA to approve the (iterated-since-type-approved)-MCAS. Presumably FAA staff would be less susceptible to this type of commercial pressure.
DOT OIG disagrees that this played no role. Here's from Page 2 of their report, i.e. the entire "Findings" summary:
While FAA and Boeing followed the established certification process for the 737 MAX 8, we identified limitations in FAA’s guidance and processes that impacted certification and led to a significant misunderstanding of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), the flight control software identified as contributing to the two accidents. First, FAA’s certification guidance does not adequately address integrating new technologies into existing aircraft models. Second, FAA did not have a complete understanding of Boeing’s safety assessments performed on MCAS until after the first accident. Communication gaps further hindered the effectiveness of the certification process. In addition, management and oversight weaknesses limit FAA’s ability to assess and mitigate risks with the Boeing ODA. For example, FAA has not yet implemented a risk-based approach to ODA oversight, and engineers in FAA’s Boeing oversight office continue to face challenges in balancing certification and oversight responsibilities. Moreover, the Boeing ODA process and structure do not ensure ODA personnel are adequately independent. While the Agency has taken steps to develop a risk-based oversight model and address concerns of undue pressure at the Boeing ODA, it is not clear that FAA’s current oversight structure and processes can effectively identify future high-risk safety concerns at the ODA.
https://www.oig.dot.gov/sites/default/files/FAA%20Certificat...
Maybe DOT OIG is confused? Big if true!
There are many types of designation in the system; your quote above is _not_ about Production Certification ODA staff (which this article is about), and indeed there is no world where Production Certification ODA would be expected to find the MCAS issue your quote is about. Those would be Type Certification ODA folks.
I look down the chain of these comments and looks like others had no problem
They keep insisting there's some binary distinction between type certification and production certification. The entire crux of OIG's diagnosis is that this is actually a much more permeable and fluid process, and the permeability of it is exactly what allowed a faulty MCAS design to make it to production.
I don’t want to barter my chickens for your shoe leather.
You as an oncologist: "cells have been dividing for thousands of years and are better off for it. the word is meaningless. I would hate to be a single-celled organism." lmao
Great insight! Therefore there's no such thing as pathological cell division or pathological financialization. Or maybe it's just if someone is super super super smart, they get so smart they somehow lose the ability to distinguish between productive and pathological financialization, and then they get to make asinine comments on HN.
"Financialization" is a 7 syllable word with no definition.
There is nothing about how Boeing builds & sells planes today that is qualitatively different than how they did it 50 years ago. Yes I am familiar with the concern that engineers hold less sway than previously and I agree this is a concern. I would not be shocked to discover that it's true. But this is not a new thing.
People who sell a thing, be they multinational airline manufactures, or a kid selling lemonade, have been able to profit by lying or skimping on quality since the dawn of time.
If your concern is that Boeing will skimp on quality & safety, then say that, instead of a buzz word like "financialization"
I have no idea where you came across the word, but when I see it used, there's generally a lot of handwaving and some vague implication that it's some new concept/activity that started in the 1970's. The only consistencies I've observed in attempts to define it is that money = financialization or "number go up" = financialization, and the speaker is generally uncomfortable with money as one of the tools we use to organize society.
I have no idea where you came across that word, but when I see it used, there's generally a lot of handwaving and some vague implication that it's bad. The only consistencies I've observed in attempts to define it is that cell division = cancer or "uncontrollable replication" = cancer, and the speaker is generally uncomfortable with cellular natural selection as a driving force behind evolution.
Financialization, in this context, refers to the process by which financial results, especially those legible to capital markets, exert pressure on the upstream industrial/corporate processes and inputs that produce those financial results.
"Excessive" or "obscene" or "pathological" financialization is when that feedback loop or reverse pressure ends up producing negative impacts on industrial/corporate processes, often in pursuit of shorter term positive effects on the financial results.
The exact mechanisms of this have been extremely well-documented in the numerous reports created in the wake of the 737 MAX failures.
Could you try leveling a substantive response now instead of a chain of strawmen and associative "the vibes of the speaker are generally off" type dismissals?
I am familiar with the 737 MAX critique and I'm very comfortable saying that Boeing was sloppy and cut corners. I just don't think the decisions they faced and failed on are new. 300 years ago someone built someone a ship and cheaped out in some way and it sank. Call it cheating/lying/scamming if you like, but the word "financialization" does not help anyone understand what's going on.
Just look at Intel.